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The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954): Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning. Directed by Jack Arnold, Screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross from a story by Maurice Zimm.

If I could make a website that just had every picture of “the gill-man” ever photographed, I would (well, I know I could, but I’d have to seriously consider what I was doing with my spare time). The design for “The Creature of the Black Lagoon”, by Milicent Patrick has to be one of the best monster designs ever created. What? Never heard of Milicent Patrick? That’s because Bud Westmore objected to her being credited with designing the creature (it’s not a job for a woman after all) and made sure that (apart from coming up with designs for the mutants in “This Island Earth”, uncredited of course) she never worked as a concept artist again.

But her creation lives on.

With a surge in interest for monsters on the Drive-In circuit, Universal once again joined the monster craze in 1954 with my favorite Universal Monster, and what’s not to like? It was even released originally in 3-D! Gill-Man is literally, a monster, unlike Frankenstein’s monster or The Wolf Man, where you can see a human side, he’s (Patrick’s initial designs were female, but since the suit was worn by men, I’ll assume it’s male) basically a fish man, but you still can’t help but feel sympathy for this creature that’s doing nothing more than protecting its turf.

In “Seven Year Itch”, Marilyn Monroe’s character says outside a theatre where the film is showing, “He wasn’t really all bad. I think he just craved a little affection, you know. A sense of being wanted and needed.” True, at its heart, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” is a one-sided love story, the Gill-Man, falling in love at first sight with the infinitely watchable Julie Adams while she is swimming. I love this scene, where we’re given a wide side angle of Adams swimming, the creature swimming right underneath her, daring, from time to time to reach out and touch her with his clawed hand. Chilling!

The creature himself, on the land sequences was played by Ben Chapman, who passed away earlier this year. For the fantastic underwater sequences, professional diver Ricou Browning donned the meticulously detailed costume, without an airtank.

I love this movie. Sure, it’s got its flaws and hokeyness, but it just seems like the perfect evolution of the movie monster, and it would become the blueprint for so many films to follow, although, over the years, the strength of having a sympathetic monster seems to have gradually been forgotten. Maybe the power of the relentless creature from “Jaws” had a lot to do with that, or maybe times just changed after the sixties.

Well, the Gill-Man has, at least, achieved immortality outside the world of film: upon discovering a new amphibian fossil, Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge christened it Eucritta melanolimnetes, greek for “creature from the black lagoon”.

Get it at Amazon:
Creature from the Black Lagoon - The Legacy Collection (Creature from the Black Lagoon / Revenge of the Creature / The Creature Walks Among Us)

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